They belong to Glasgow!

Over three hundred people gathered in Glasgow’s George Square earlier today to protest the UK Border Agency’s decision to axe Glasgow City Council’s contract to house hundreds of families seeking asylum in the UK.

This comes after talks broke down between the Border Agency and the council over the grant given to the local authority to accommodate asylum seekers.

Six hundred families – a total of 1300 individuals – have received letters over the past few days containing the following:

We must inform you that as a result of the change of your accommodation provider you may be required to move to alternative accommodation in the Scotland region. Whenever possible, you will be given three to five days’ notice of the
move to give you time to get ready. At the moment we cannot give you an exact date for any potential move. However, it will be sometime within the coming weeks. You will be allowed to take two pieces of luggage per person to your new accommodation.

Glasgow has been a designated “dispersal” area for asylum seekers since 2000, when the council gained a lucrative £10m annual contract to house up to 2000 asylum seekers. Most were put in dilapidated, run-down accommodation which the council already found virtually impossible to let to ordinary residents. But as Scottish housing charity Positive Action in Housing have said:

Refugees have brought a sense of community and vibrance to neighbourhoods where previously there was none. We see no merit in houses being left empty, damp and vandalised when there are people who need and want them. Their unnecessary departure will devastate those communities.

But this is nothing compared to the impact that being uprooted from Glasgow will have for 1300 individuals concerned. Having fled their home countries fearing persecution or worse, many of them will have eventually found a home, and some level of stability, in Glasgow. But due to a whim of the UK Borders Agency they once again face massive upheaval in their lives. To add to this distress, as the above letter states, they will get ‘three to five days notice’ – to wave goodbye to their friends and neighbours, leave their schools and colleges, and pack their belongings into ‘two pieces of luggage per person’. Glasgow City Council are right to condemn this as totally unacceptable – it’s a disgusting way to treat anyone, let alone someone who’s already been through a huge amount of suffering and distress in their lives. UKBA have laid bare their priorities – that saving money is more important than the wellbeing of those they’re legally obliged to look after.

UK Borders Agency will now be looking to tender the contract to house asylum seekers to private companies – as many in Glasgow already are. The idea that asylum seekers will be better looked after in the private sector is madness, where unscrupulous landlords can exploit some of the most vulnerable people in society. Although far from perfect, organisations working with asylum seekers in Glasgow – like the brilliant Unity Centre - describe council run services as ‘the best service provider in our experience’. There’s a number of reasons for this – more accountability and regulation, and greater provision of services through social work, homelessness services, repairs and so on. With the council’s contract terminated, Positive Action in Housing anticipate “an increase in refugee homelessness, complaints about isolation, poor access to statutory services, poor housing, repairs and lack of basic amenities like hot water and electricity, to name a few issues. We also anticipate that there will be more people going undetected who are sick, disabled or traumatised.”

There is now speculation that UKBA may have motives beyond simply financial savings in their attempts to lower the number of asylum seekers living in Glasgow. Asylum seekers have, over the past decade, become an integral part of the fabric of the city. Across the city, those seeking asylum are our friends, our neighbours, our school mates. When asylum seekers have been mistreated, threatened with deportation or locked up, people across Scotland have come to their defence, from the Glasgow Girls and the recent campaign to keep Florence and Precious Mhango, to the hundreds who marched in solidarity with the city’s asylum seekers following the tragic events at the Red Road flats earlier this year. Even the local press, far from playing to the racism and bigotry of the national media, have often been supportive, and backed campaigns to stop deportations. Things have not been made easy for UKBA – it would be no great surprise if this is a deliberate attempt to ‘disperse’ asylum seekers to an area where the authorities think they’ll get less hassle.

It’s typical of recent governments’ attitudes towards asylum seekers that they can be uprooted from their homes and lives at barely a week’s notice. Speakers at today’s demonstration made clear that those wishing to stay in Glasgow would receive all the support they need in their battle to stay in the city they now consider home, with the fight continuing this Saturday, when another protest has been called outside the UK Borders Agency office at 200 Brand Street, Govan, from 10.30am.